


At Last the Heart, Poor Old Wound

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (background) - Freeform, Brief mentions of drug and alcohol abuse, Canon compliant up to 11x22, Character Study, Domestic, Fluff, M/M, PTSD, Romance, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22520950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Thank you, said Lazarus, / for in heaven it had been no different. / In heaven there had been no change.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	At Last the Heart, Poor Old Wound

_ "Jesus rubbed all the flesh of Lazarus / and at last the heart, poor old wound, / started up in spite of itself… / His soul dropped down from heaven. / Thank you, said Lazarus, / for in heaven it had been no different. / In heaven there had been no change." _

_ — “Jesus Summons Forth,” Anne Sexton _

They’ve been all over the U.S. in their years of hunting, but as of late, the Winchesters stick to Kansas.

It is a new concept, the space between them and those they love. Mainly, now, because there is so little of it. Charlie is only a forty minute drive away, in a one-bedroom apartment that smells like cigarettes and mixed spices. They offered her sanctuary at the bunker, of course, but she had gently declined. Dean hadn’t blamed her, he appreciates having a place to call home— truly, he does— but it feels, in every sense of the word,  _ haunted _ . The irony of such a statement is not lost on Dean, and as far as the brothers know, there aren’t any ghosts in the bunker. But it feels haunted nonetheless.

(Memories coat the walls like a thick layer of paint. There are pieces of its previous inhabitants everywhere they look: a family photo tucked in the corner of a storage room; chess pieces scattered beneath the fridge; an old guitar, lying dusty and unused among the corpses of long-dead mice. All these things speak to the fact that Dean and Sam live in a place that doesn’t truly belong to them— no matter how they fill the space, it will never relinquish the feeling of a home abandoned.)

Jody, Donna, Claire, and Alex aren’t very far, either. Only a three-and-a-half hour drive away, most of which trickles past thick forests and the occasional farmhouse. Every second Saturday of the month Sam and Dean dine with them around an old wooden table, indulging in wonderful uneventfulness. Their house is cramped with four women living within its walls, and Sam and Dean’s presence fills it to bursting, but in it’s full, then, in a warm way. The fullness you feel after a good meal, or a tight hug. Claire behaves better in their presence, though she enjoys showing off her aim by throwing knives at their food. Alex is still quiet, but has grown accustomed to her life enough to give Sam and Dean shy smiles and pass the butter without shaking. Jody and Donna are happy, and kind as ever, and after a few months of dinners Sam elbows Dean in the ribs and gestures to the rings on their fingers with a grin.

They and Charlie are the only family that the Winchesters have left. There is another, yes, but he is no human— an angel with an upturned collar, worn down shoes, and an icy stare. But he doesn’t matter, Dean tells himself. He isn’t a part of the equation. He is both close, and far away. He could appear in the blink of an eye but doesn’t choose to do so. He is neither a long drive away or a short one. The space between him and Dean is inconceivable in both its vastness and its smallness.

/

And so they stick to Kansas. It is nearly winter. Leaves cling to their branches, desperate for their last moments, before falling to the sidewalk. It isn’t cold in Lebanon, not yet, but precipitation pushes at the clouds, water rising above its dam and threatening to drown the people that walk beneath it.

The consistent, gray sky has a sadness and a slowness to it, but Dean has come to associate its particular shade with an emotion adjacent to contentment.

And it is beneath a gray sky, leaning against the Impala, tucked under the Bunker’s makeshift driveway, that Dean turns to shallow introspection. For, though they are nearing happiness every day they make their mark on the world, true contentment eludes them. Or eludes Dean, at least. He grasps at it when it skirts by him, but it escapes his clutches again and again. Trampled upon by yellow rain boots on a worn sidewalk. Something is missing: Dean Winchester is doing something wrong, to, he thinks, no one’s surprise but his own.

Mournful as he is, he does not sweep  _ all _ gratitude for what he can keep ahold of to the side. While frustrating, a puzzle missing one piece is much more satisfying to look at than scrambled, disconnected pieces. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Dean doesn’t bother to think any harder on it.

Sam walks out of the bunker then, pushing the doorstop (which is less of a doorstop, and more of a big rock they found in nearby bushes) out of the way with his heel. The heavy metal door slams shut with a deafening  _ clang, _ making Sam cringe as he hands Dean his coffee, but Dean doesn’t remember making it, and the slam of the door rings in his ears as the off-yellow coffee mug seems to hang in midair. 

(Beams crash from the ceiling, thunderous and violent, followed by collapsing walls. Dean grabs the limp figure on its knees in front of him, pulls it out of the way of splinters and debris. A gunshot echoes in a bright hallway, empty but for the bullet that races towards Dean and drives through his gut. Electricity crackles in a clearing as winged silhouettes appear around Dean, encircling him. Pale bark peels to reveal dark flesh, bleeding through marred skin.)

Dean takes the coffee mug from Sam, silently, knowing he took far too long to do so.

Sam doesn’t remark on it, and gratitude curls in his chest like a cat, purring and kneading at Dean’s ribcage. Sam simply walks to the Impala’s passenger door and grasps at the handle clumsily, struggling to keep hold of a stack of books, a roadmap, and his laptop. Dean rolls his eyes and pulls his own door open, leaving his brother to spill into the car by himself.

Sam thinks that a group of vampires have made a nest all too-close to a town near the border of Kansas, opposite to Lebanon. Dean thinks Sam’s idea is far-fetched, as there’s barely enough evidence to suggest one vampire, and they always hunt in groups. He’d tried to push for calling a girl only an hour out of town who could kill a nest of vampires with her hands tied behind her back, but Sam had rambled on about how it would be good for them (Dean) to get some fresh air. And they (Dean) needed to pop into the closest doctor’s office with newly-faked medical history documents and refill Dean’s dwindling supply of testosterone. 

A nest of three might as well be the same as just one, Dean finds himself rumbling, a week later. And still, three barely counts as a nest, he’d been right, God damn it.

/

Dean brushes dust off of a pale manilla folder labeled in a language he doesn’t understand and throws it to his left, making a mental note to have Sam translate it. He’s been tasked with organizing a storage room Sam had come upon deep in the underbelly of the bunker. When Dean had opened the door and flicked on the dim light, he could see the thick spread of dust particles in the air. If it weren’t for the long flight of stairs separating him from the main level, he would have gotten a mask to filter air that hadn’t been touched in years. Age fills every crack, pocket and corner of the room, and Dean wonders if you can develop asthma for the first time in your forties.

A smell fills the room too— not especially strong, but just enough to make one feel unnerved— like dry earth, and the rotting of things too small to see. He’d unearthed a nest of rodent-like remains an hour ago, barely any meat left on the bones, tucked behind a bent cardboard box. He’d gagged and then set the box back down where he’d found it, not in the mood to mourn small animals. His job forced him to see much more gory, and often more upsetting things than dead rats, but his heart still ached as he pushed the box back.

Dean’s organizing is better described as loose sorting, but he’d had to help out somehow. He’d spent too much time moping on the couch, more often than not with a whiskey in his hands, simply watching Sam do the work. Cleaning and re-interpreting the Men of Letters endless collection of files was boring, but it was something he could do, and something he could finish. It had a beginning and an end, and Dean had decided that was what he needed.

The door behind him creaks open. Dean doesn’t breathe, doesn’t think. It does not cross his mind that it could be his brother entering behind him— no sense of safety blocks the flood of violent defense that overtakes his limbs.

It isn’t Sam, and it isn’t a robber, or a monster, or a demon with glowing yellow eyes. It’s Cas.

The bin Dean had been sorting through, and that he had hefted over his head in order to throw at the intruder behind him, drops to the ground and a puff of dusty papers flies into the air, landing gently at their feet.

Castiel isn’t human, no, but he still isn’t an angel. Not anymore. A lot changed when Amara snapped her fingers, with the best of intentions, trying to grant Dean happiness in return for the faux-therapy session he’d arranged between her and God. As a result, Charlie had returned to life. Sam’s carpal tunnel healed. And she had “fixed,” Cas, “for,” Dean. What that entailed Dean still isn’t sure— but what he did know was that after losing his grace, and then getting it back, something hadn’t quite fit right, within Cas. Too much time as a human, maybe. Too much time where a soul filled the space where his grace used to be. And so when the grace returned, it had been forced into the cavity in his heart, useful, but misshaped. Wrong. Amara hadn’t given Cas a soul, nor had she given him grace. He wasn’t a man, wasn’t an angel. He ate and drank and slept, as far as Dean knew, could die, but he could also whisk himself away in a flash, and heal Dean if he got a papercut while flipping through old comics. He felt pain and he felt love. 

Yet he still left, still disappeared in a flutter of feathers and the brush of two fingers on Dean’s shoulder as his goodbye. Some things Amara just couldn’t change.

Pulled from his awestruck stare, Dean glanced down at the bin on the ground, and coughs, hunching over as his lungs expel what dust had flowed into his body.

“Sorry about that. I thought you were an intruder.”

“I might have been Sam. I don’t think any monster or intruder could get into this place.”

The prideful creature in his stomach hisses, and Dean replies, foolishly and defensively: “Well, it’s happened before. Besides, you could have knocked.” Dean knows it’s a low blow. Cas is, and likely will always be, unaccustomed to the small niceties expected by humans— things like knocking before entering. 

Cas ignores Dean’s defensiveness, instead glancing around the messy storage room. “Sam said you were cleaning. Would you like some help? Or…” He is cut off by Dean, pushed by some mysterious force, wrapping him in a tight hug. Dean empties his stomach, tight and nauseous as it is, of all his pride and cowardice. It had been six months since he last saw Cas, and with his scattered senses gathered back together, an overwhelming sense of relief fills his chest.

Cas sets a hand on Dean’s back in acknowledgment, but doesn’t hug back. It’s an unsurprising disappointment. 

/

Castiel remains at the bunker. Dean spends his time on the edge of his seat, waiting for Cas to announce his departure— or worse, for him to leave without notice.

He doesn’t.

/

Cas is not a morning person, and while Dean sleeps until ten when he can afford it, Cas slumbers well past one in the afternoon even when he has things to do. He eats breakfast around when Dean makes himself lunch, so they usually eat together. Sam tends to be occupied with a cup of coffee and boxes upon boxes of disorganized, unintelligible files, so Dean doesn’t see him much. It’s okay. Cas feels like enough.

In this, there is domesticity. But it morphs into something else, something more tender, and much more delicate. Something that could shatter into thousands of seperate little sharp pieces, given the wrong move.

Specifically, it morphs into this delicate creature as Dean immerses Cas in his favorite movies, shows, music, and even a few books. Dean uses movies, which make up most of what they share together, as something to play in the background while they organize. A convincing excuse he tells both to himself and Cas. But every time, without fail, he devolves into explaining the movie’s plot to Cas, or explaining the meaning behind certain lyrics of a song, or reciting the entire history of a band or an actor. And Cas, for whatever reason, listens. Not to the information, Dean starts to suspect, though Cas is a genius at trivia and recollecting Dean’s tidbits, but moreso to Dean. 

Dean realizes he doesn’t mind.

They become more comfortable with one another— and it’s not something outrageous, really. When two people spend time together, they tend to find it easier to be around one another. But for some reason, it surprises Dean. He thinks about it when he cooks, when he drinks, when his room is dark and his head is pressed into his pillow, trying to sleep without dreaming of blue eyes and a gentle laugh. Cas was never really cold, nor was he ever truly cruel, but he was always distant. And now he is here in body and mind and Dean can barely take it in.

/

Cas eventually loses the trenchcoat, at both Sam and Dean’s (more reluctant,) urging. Instead, he switches between the same two sweaters— a dull purple v-neck and a warm gray knitted one. He prefers the gray. Both could fit Sam more than comfortably, and are oversized on Cas’s lithe, boney frame. A small, selfish part of Dean growls at the lost potential of seeing Cas in something a bit more fitting.

They got the sweaters at Target, an uninteresting grocery run for Sam and Dean— outside of the fact that the nearest Target was an hour away— but an adventure for Cas. Temporary God and all-knowing half-angel or not, shopping was new to him. He’d muttered like a child in the back of the Impala that his coat was fine, it was reliable, for God’s sake. But both brothers had manhandled him into the store, and Dean had steered him towards the menswear while Sam, the traitor, had headed to the produce section.

Cas proved unendingly distractible, now that he was free of the pressures that had weighed on him for so, so many thousands and thousands of years. Cas felt safe, for once. And it made the creature in Dean’s stomach purr with pride. Cas was dumbfounded by kitchen utensils, and spent ten minutes smelling soap, all while pawing every aisle they walked through. Eventually, though, they’d left with two sweaters and a pair of sweatpants for Cas, and a lot of vegetables. Dean marked it as a success in his book, minus the vegetables.

Regardless of which one he’s wearing, Dean forms a habit of tugging Cas with him by hooking his fingers under Cas’s sweater— under the rim past his hips, on his sleeve, once or twice beneath his collar, rough fingers brushing against Cas’s softer, gentle collarbones— in order to get him to move. He does this on cases, mainly, when Cas spends too long staring at something and they need to head to the morgue, or back to the motel. But the habit migrates to their interactions in private. 

It turns out, even with thick sweaters drowning his thin form, Cas is an easily chilled man. Dean silently thinks it’s because he lacks meat on his bones, but doesn’t mention it, lest it drive Cas to warm up in any way other than pressing against Dean’s side, resting his head on Dean’s shoulder and breathing gently, listening attentively to Dean’s droning.

/

“Goddamn, Winchester! How could you do this to me?”

“Hey, it isn’t my fault! Blame Mr. Caesar himself for getting your order wrong.” Dean peers over at Charlie’s pizza: tomato sauce, cheese, and a few slices of pineapple. No ham, as she’d wanted.

“You can have some of my pepperoni, Charlie.” Offers Cas.

Charlie smiles but waves him off, and, making an exaggeratedly sad face, takes a bite out of her ham-less pizza. “It’s okay Cas. I can get all the meat I need myself.”

Dean coughs a little on his own slice and Charlie snickers at him, while Cas looks vaguely lost and Sam shoots his brother an exasperated glance. All four of them sit around a makeshift lounge— a couch, chair, and ancient coffee table crammed around the bunker’s only T.V. The menu of an old, and frankly, boring-looking french film is paused on the screen, showing a woman lounging on a chair, loose hands pointing as if unintentionally towards the “PLAY MOVIE,” option. Sam had wanted to show it to Charlie, claiming, “If nothing else, you’ll like all the scantily clad women in it.” And while usually such a summary would entice Dean, too, he’s intent on zoning out for the full hour and twenty-seven minute runtime, in favor of playing with the hem of Cas’s gray sweater. It’s cuff has started to unravel, but the half-angel’s wrists are more captivating than anything else Dean can summon up in his mind. And he picks at it, absentmindedly rubbing his fingers over Cas’s wrist and palm and a bit up his forearm, until Cas finally pulls his hand away.

“You’re going to pull apart my sweater, Dean.” He says quietly, with a gentle look.

“Sorry.” Dean replies quickly. Before he can set his hands in his own lap, Cas grabs them himself and laces their fingers together. Dean hides a smile in Cas’s shoulder as Sam and Charlie argue about a character from the movie he can’t even remember the name of.

/

He wakes in the dark and he cannot breathe. His blankets are suffocating and heavy, as if a car rests atop him. 

Dean’s nightmares about Hell are his least favorite. They take bits and pieces from memories he has shoved into a dark, hidden place in his heart, and warps them to be worse than they already were. And even as the imaginary weight lifts from his chest and his heartbeat begins to slow again, yellow eyes seem to peer at him from the corner of his room. Their owner waits for him to relax, so they can pounce.

Usually, Dean would take leftover pain medication and lull himself into an unsatisfying, but dreamless slumber. However, the sounds of rattling chains and liquid dripping steadily onto cold floors plays again and again his head, a scratched CD, refusing to melt away with the rest of his nightmare. So he relinquishes any hope of falling asleep again and pads quietly past Sam’s room, down the hall and into the “meeting room,” where they drink more than they hold meetings. Before he can search high and low for any whiskey Sam has stashed away in an effort to keep Dean sober, he catches a pale hand out of the corner of his eye. He jumps, but calms almost immediately, seeing Cas sleeping gently on the couch in the makeshift lounge, T.V. playing on mute.

He tiptoes over to see the half-angel a bit better, on an utterly selfish impulse. Cas isn’t asleep, his eyes are half lidded, but open, glazed over as he looks at the T.V.

“You’re up early.”

Cas starts a bit, looks at Dean, and then back at the T.V.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.” 

Silence drips down Dean’s face like sweat, too shy to break the tension caused by the dark of the bunker.

“I did not dream before.” Cas says, quietly. “It is a disorienting feeling, seeing things from your past placed before you, and viewing them through such a corrupted lens. I dislike it.”

Dean sits down next to him, giving Cas space, but not a lot of it. He stretches his arm behind the other man, so it rests on the back of the couch, almost touching Cas’s neck. “You can have good dreams, you know.”

Cas frowns. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had a dream that I enjoyed. I suppose the pool of enjoyable things my mind has to draw from is rather… limited.”

Something bitter and acidic bubbles up Dean’s throat. He relaxes his arm and lets it fall against Cas, curling him into a half-embrace against Dean’s chest. The creature that had been napping in his ribcage purrs deeply, twitching its tail, and making his stomach flutter. They sit like that, in silence, for a while, until Dean gets tired of the documentary playing on the T.V. and stretches to grab the remote and change the channel to a cooking show. He keeps the volume muted, more interested in the slightly wheezy breaths coming from the man curled into his side.

Cas’s elbow digs a bit into Dean’s chest, and he regrets not wearing a bra as he adjusts their position to be more comfortable. Old age doesn’t help much, either, but he’s determined to enjoy the moment and stay the course. He shifts so that Cas’s head presses against Dean’s collar, and he can press his lips to the other man’s forehead.

Butterfly kisses, barely there. 

All the quiet sounds surrounding Dean flood together until he hears nothing at all, too immersed in his own thoughts. He is calm, with a loving weight on top of him. He gives up, and falls into the warm embrace of sleep.

Cas proves to be better than any pain medication. They don’t sleep alone again.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on a plane a year ago. Un-beta'd.  
> [Playlist link.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2h1VYChHyzCIZuLt4LSTth)


End file.
